[Avodah] Creation eternal heretical - hashkafa question

[Micha Berger]

On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 10:38:22AM -0400, Hankman wrote:
: I apologize for my not taking the care to include the word "always"
...
: Please see my comments to RDR I posted just a few minutes ago. Basically,
: I had no intention to imply zeman even though I used the unquoted word
: "always." If that mislead you, then I apologize for that.

The problem isn't the word always. It's inherent in your question.

You want to know why Plato's argument to explain why the universe must
be infinitely old isn't valid.

You are speaking of an infinitely old universe, not an atemporal one.
On that side of the question, you not only imply zeman, zeman is the
iqqar of the statement.

G-d's Will is atemptoral, lemaalah min hazeman. A different thing
altogether. That's the basic mismatch I was referring to.

There is no reason why His atemporal desire maps to an infinite timeline
any more than it makes sense to map it to a finite one. Why not say
that one of the thing He Desires (again, for want of a better tense
for atemporal desire, I'm using the present tense) is a universe of
finite duration. Is it any different than His desiring that I (to pick
another nivra) have finite size, finite longevity and that my abilities
are finite?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
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